Mack Swain was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actorAn actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
and
vaudevillianVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, prolific throughout the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s.
Film career
Born Moroni Swain to Robert Henry Swain and Mary Ingeborg Jensen in Salt Lake City,
UtahUtah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, he worked in vaudeville before starting in
silent filmA silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
at
Keystone StudiosKeystone Studios was an early movie studio founded in Edendale, California in 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman, owners of the New York Motion Picture Company...
under
Mack SennettMack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...
. While with Keystone, he was teamed up with
Chester ConklinChester Cooper Conklin was an American comedian and actor. He appeared in over 280 films, about half of them in the silent era.-Early life:...
to make a series of
comedy filmComedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
s. With Swain as "Ambrose" and Conklin as the grand mustachioed "Walrus", they performed these roles in several films including "
The Battle of Ambrose and Walrus" and "
Love, Speed and Thrills," both made in 1915. Besides these comedies, the two appeared together in a variety of other films, twenty-six all told, and they also appeared separately and/or together in films starring
Mabel NormandMabel Normand was an American silent film comedienne and actress. She was a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and is noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors...
, Charles Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle and most of the rest of the roster of Keystone players.
He later took his Ambrose character with him to the now-obscure
L-KO KompanyThe L-KO Kompany, or L-KO Komedies, was an American motion picture company founded by Henry Lehrman that produced silent one-, two- and very occasionally three-reel comedy shorts between 1914 and 1919...
. Having already worked with Charles Chaplin at Keystone, Swain began working with Chaplin again at
First NationalFirst National was an association of independent theater owners in the United States that expanded from exhibiting movies to distributing them, and eventually to producing them as a movie studio, called First National Pictures, Inc. It later merged with Warner Bros.-Early history:The First National...
in 1921, appearing in
The Idle ClassThe Idle Class is a 1921 American silent film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin for First National Pictures.Charlie Chaplin, as the "Little Tramp", heads to a resort for warm weather and a bit of golf. While at a dance at a country club Edna Purviance mistakes Chaplin for her husband...
,
Pay DayPay Day or payday is a specified day when one is paid, usually workers collecting wages from their employers.It may also refer to:* Pay Day , a board game by Parker Brothers...
and
The Pilgrim. He is also remembered for his role as
Big Jim McKay in the
1925-Events:*November 5: The Big Parade holds its Grand Premier*December 30: premier of Ben-Hur the most expensive silent film ever made costing 4-6 million dollars -Top grossing films :...
film
The Gold RushThe Gold Rush is a 1925 silent film comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin in his Little Tramp role. The film also stars Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite....
, for
United ArtistsUnited Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
, written by and starring Chaplin.
Swain died in
Tacoma, WashingtonTacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
in 1935. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, he received a star on the
Hollywood Walk of FameThe Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
, at 1500 Vine Street.
External links